


Wrapped Up In Wire

by nothingtofearnothingtohide



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Panic Attacks, Unsafe lion practices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 19:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20394931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingtofearnothingtohide/pseuds/nothingtofearnothingtohide
Summary: Pidge bottles things.





	Wrapped Up In Wire

**Author's Note:**

> One night months ago I woke up and wrote this thing in a frenzy and immediately went back to sleep. I wasn't going to do anything with it, but with hidge week happening I figured I'd fix it up and post it.
> 
> Set in some post-season 8 au where Allura didn't die and they rebuilt the castle I guess. It's the future we wanted them to have. For the hidge week day 1 prompt, future.
> 
> Title from Mumford & Sons' Broad-Shouldered Beasts.

The screaming had Hunk jolting out of sleep, and went on just long enough for him to be conscious and register that someone was, actually, screaming, and then it stopped. He stayed in bed for another moment, considering, before getting up. It came from the lab.

Shuffling down the long hallway, he ran into Keith, equally sleep-slow and half-alerted, leaning out of his bedroom door.

"You heard that?" Keith muttered.

"Yeah," Hunk said.

"Was it from the lab?"

"Must have been," Hunk said. A girl's scream, so it could only have been Pidge or Allura, and both of their bedrooms were in the opposite direction. This way, there was only the lab. So it was Pidge. "I'll check on her."

Keith mumbled something, already heading back into his dark room.

Hunk was expecting to find a mess in the lab, something dropped or broken, but the room was still. "Pidge?"

Her desk was cluttered, but she wasn't in her chair, and a couple of her projects sat across the room in heaps of nodes and wires, but untouched; they'd been there when Hunk had gone up to bed. In its place the green lion sat on its haunches, head lifted. Its awareness was above the plane that Hunk walked in. Its eyes were dark—Pidge wasn't in the cockpit.

"Pidge?" Hunk tried again, wondering if he could have imagined the scream, or misjudged it, but Keith heard it too. She must have been here.

He shuffled inside, looking to the lion, but caught a tiny sound from over by the desk, and walked around to the other side.

Pidge was curled up underneath, arms around her knees.

"What are you doing?" Hunk asked, before he had the sense to be softer.

"What are you doing?" she asked back. She uncurled herself. She had to crawl to get out from under the desk, and she turned her back as soon as she was standing, fiddling with one of the computers.

"What's with the screaming?" Hunk asked.

"I can't get the damn sensors to work," she said.

Hunk was tired enough that he was almost ready to believe her. He'd been asleep; how well, really, could he have told between a scream of panic and a scream of frustration? But she was shaky now, he could see it in her hands. And frustration didn't make her hide under the desk.

Hunk leaned against the table, far enough away from her space to let her breathe. "Are you doing okay?"

"Sure," she snapped.

"It's really late."

She snorted.

"Pidge," he said.

"What do you want?" She turned, leaning on the other side of the desk, mirroring him, but with her arms crossed.

"To help," Hunk said.

"I'm fine," she insisted. "Unless you want to make these god—damn—sensors—" She slammed the heel of her hand onto the table. "Make them work."

He'd been working on the sensors with her for hours that afternoon. They weren't a high-priority project: just frustrating. He knew that. She knew that, but not well enough to put them down and let herself go to sleep.

"I'm sorry," Hunk said. About the sensors. About everything.

She closed her eyes. The green lion shifted, dropping itself to their height, their plane. "Want to come with me?" Pidge asked.

"Where?"

"Flying," she said. "It makes me feel better."

"Flying where?"

She made a noncommittal sound, shrugged her shoulders without looking at him. She went to her lion. Hunk trailed behind.

The cockpit lit as soon as she touched the controls; they were pushing off as soon as she was seated. The lion purred impatiently, waiting for the hangar doors to release them. Hunk could just barely sense the lion's disquiet, like listening through a bowl of water. Like talking to Pidge.

She shot them off into the darkness. The green lion was quick, snappish, almost. In moments they were farther than Hunk was necessarily comfortable leaving the castle. They didn't have armor, helmets. Space was long and cold and far.

Space was a lot of nothing, but they were truly nowhere. Nothing solid was in any sort of range; they would never find any blip in open space without a wormhole, not before too much time had passed. Pidge pushed the lion faster anyway, like they were outrunning something, until it was whining, and then shot in the other direction, nearly knocking Hunk off his feet.

"What are you doing?" he said, exasperation bleeding out.

"Flying," Pidge said, turning them around again, spiraling the lion in a crazy maneuver, something Keith would have pulled years ago. She wasn't flying; she was running, avoiding. Her hands shook on the controls.

She swept the lion upside down again and her hand slipped and the lion skyrocketed, or nosedived, jetting out of control and sending Hunk stumbling into the door before Pidge slammed on the brakes and he nearly crashed into the back of her seat.

There was no gravity, no features, nothing for Hunk to orient to. The lion hovered still in empty space until its navigation righted itself and the castle reappeared on the monitor, a homing.

Pidge inhaled and exhaled and then trembled.

"Yeah, so," Hunk breathed, sounding calmer than he was. "Going flying in a panic attack probably isn't the best idea."

"Panic attack?" Pidge snapped. "I'm not having a panic attack—"

"Yeah, you are—"

"No!"

"Pidge, come on," Hunk said. "That's what this is."

"No. I'm fine."

"You will be. Just take a minute. It's okay. It's not a big deal."

She was quiet, arms crossed, staring out. He was ready to move away from her, leave the cockpit, even, when she whispered, "Shit."

"Hmm?"

"Shit," she repeated, trembling. "I—I'm sorry, I almost—"

"It's okay," Hunk insisted.

"I almost," she tried, but she didn't finish, breaking into a dry sob instead.

Hunk knelt in front of her, hand on her knee. "It's okay. You'll be alright."

She came crashing forward, latching onto his neck and holding tight. He wrapped his arms solidly around her and pressed his chin into her shoulder. She cried.

She was still shaky when she pulled away, sniffling. "That was weird," she said, laughing, watery.

Hunk sat back to lean against the console. "It happens."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize."

"I'm sorry for bringing you out here, at least. It could have been dangerous, if we weren't in the middle of nowhere."

He shrugged. "How bad could it be?" He wasn't scared of crashing lions anymore.

"Bad," Pidge said anyway.

Hunk waited a moment. "What started it?" he asked, quietly.

"The sensors," Pidge said. "For real. I can't figure it out and I get so fucking—I don't know, hopeless, sometimes—" She cut off.

Hunk nodded.

"Like I can't breathe if I don't get one damn thing right."

"Exactly."

"I didn't mean to scream. I didn't mean to wake you up."

"It's better that you did, anyway," Hunk said. "You can come talk to me before it gets that bad, you know."

"I didn't," Pidge said.

"Pidge," he said, waiting until she met his eyes. "Tell me you will."

"Sure."

He didn't decide then whether to believe her or not.

"Have you had panic attacks before?" she asked.

He held back from laughing. "Yeah."

She made a face. "I guess I knew that."

"Want to go home?"

She hesitated, and he backpedaled.

"Or take your time, if you need to."

"No, I'm fine," she said. "I just want to go home home. I miss Bae Bae. And Matt." Tenderly she pushed her lion forward, sending them towards the castle.

Hunk stayed on the floor behind the console, feeling space slip away around them as they drew nearer, not as recklessly fast as before, but going home. "Is Matt still on Earth?" he asked, for small talk.

"No. I wish he was. I want to see him there. On Earth.. And my mom and dad."

Hunk's family had never left Earth, not for more than a spin around the solar system. They had always left him somewhere to come home to, even now when his home was on the castle, with the team.

Matt was a traveler. Matt barely ever stayed on Earth. Probably less frequently than Pidge did. Sam and Colleen were about more often now, too. Everyone Pidge cared about was in space, in places strange to them. Even—even being the traveler that she was, it must be hard, being among the most spacefaring humans there had ever been, not to have a home to go to, where she was raised, with a settled family.

"I'm going to have to ask Slav about the stupid sensors," Pidge said, and Hunk let her change the subject. "I was avoiding him."

"Give it another day," Hunk said. "We might still get it."

They were back at the castle and the hangar opened to them, like home, like a pocket out of the long dark nothing. Hunk waited for Pidge to get out of her seat.

"Go to bed," he advised.

"I will," she said. "Um. Thank you."

"Of course," Hunk said.


End file.
